The Door in the Wall

Summary

The Door in the Wall is set in England in the fourteenth century, in the reign of Edward III, during the years of the Black Death. Robin, the ten-year-old son of the knight Sir John de Bureford and his wife Lady Maud, has been raised to expect the life of a nobleman's son: he is to go as a page to the household of Sir Peter de Lindsay, learn the arts of chivalry and one day become a knight like his father. But his father rides north to the king's war in Scotland, and his mother is summoned to attend the Queen. Left in the family's London house in the care of servants, Robin falls ill with a fever that leaves his legs weak and useless. When the plague reaches the city, the servants sicken or flee, and the boy lies alone and unable to walk. A friar, Brother Luke, hears of him and carries him to the hospice of St. Mark's, where the brothers nurse him back to some strength. Robin is bitter and impatient at first, but Brother Luke teaches him to use his hands: he whittles and carves wood and learns to read and write. Brother Luke also teaches him to swim in the river, which strengthens his arms, and Robin learns to get about on crutches. Over and over the friar tells him that every wall has a door if one follows it far enough, and that reading, craft and patience are such doors. When the plague has passed, Brother Luke and a cheerful minstrel, John-go-in-the-Wynd, set out with Robin on the long journey to Lindsay castle in Shropshire, near the Welsh border, where Sir Peter has offered to take him in. The journey is long and hard for a boy on crutches, and Robin learns to bear it without complaint. At Lindsay, other boys call him Crookshanks, and he learns to play the harp and to serve in ways that suit his strength. Then Welsh raiders besiege the castle and town in the fog, and the garrison is cut off. Robin, too lame to fight, volunteers to go for help: disguised as a shepherd boy, he slips out, crosses the cold river by swimming, and makes his way through the enemy to John-go-in-the-Wynd, who carries word to Sir Peter's cousin Sir Hugh. The relieving force arrives on a signal and the siege is broken. At Christmas the King and Queen come to Lindsay with Robin's parents. The King honors Robin's courage, and his father and mother rejoice in him as he is; Robin understands that he has found his own door in the wall. The book was published by Doubleday in 1949 with de Angeli's own illustrations and received the Newbery Medal in 1950.

Top Lessons

• The door in the wall

  Brother Luke teaches Robin that a closed path is not the end: if he follows the wall far enough, he will find a door. Reading, carving, swimming and music each become such a door for a boy who can no longer train as a knight. The book teaches children to look for what they can do rather than grieve only for what they cannot.

• Patience is learned

  At first Robin shouts at the friars and refuses food. Slowly, through small tasks and steady kindness, he learns to wait, to try again and to thank others. De Angeli shows patience as a skill that grows with practice.

• A different kind of knight

  Robin cannot ride into battle, but during the siege he risks his life to bring help. The book suggests that courage and service, not strong legs, make a knight's heart.

• Kindness to the helpless

  Brother Luke takes in a sick child whom everyone else has left, and the friars care for him without asking anything in return. The story shows the monastery as a place of mercy in a time of plague.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The book is a children's story of physical disability and rehabilitation set against the Black Death. Robin's illness is never named: a fever leaves his legs weak and his gait crooked, and he walks thereafter on crutches. Modern readers have sometimes wondered whether de Angeli imagined something like poliomyelitis, a dreaded childhood disease in the America of the 1940s, but the book gives no diagnosis, and any such reading is speculation. Its picture of care is monastic: nursing, food, warmth, and above all occupation and exercise, as Brother Luke sets Robin to carving, reading and swimming to strengthen his arms and spirit. The plague itself appears in the emptying of the house and the city. For a medical reader the book is a gentle early portrait of what would now be called occupational and physical therapy and of the psychological work of accepting a lasting impairment.

• Opening chapters

  Robin falls ill and loses the use of his legs as plague spreads through London and his servants abandon the house.

• St. Mark's hospice chapters

  Brother Luke nurses Robin and sets him to whittling, reading and swimming to restore strength and hope.

• Siege of Lindsay

  Robin, on crutches, swims the river and crosses enemy lines to bring help.